Sunday, 10 January 2010

Teaching young children to read; is it a good idea?

Rather than respond to each individual comment on this subject, it seems to me to be worth making a new post. I think that part of the problem here might be that when people talk about "teaching children to read", they might be thinking of a formal lessons in synthetic phonics or a classroom setting, something along those lines. Let's see how the process actually works.

We can forget all about morphemes, phonemes, phonics, blending and sequencing; they have nothing at all to do with the case. Indeed, a completely different part of the brain is involved in this sort of work, in fact a different hemisphere entirely. Let us start with the fact that babies like one-to-one interaction with an adult. We would all agree with that proposition, I suppose. This can take the form of singing nursery rhymes, playing peekaboo, all sorts of games. One can also use large wooden inset boards with one or two brightly coloured, chunky geometric shapes; say a red circle and a blue triangle. Any baby will enjoy fitting these into the board and having a parent smile and laugh when this is accomplished. A good spin-off here is that the constant talk during this makes it possible to teach the baby the words "Circle" and "Triangle". This sort of pattern recognition takes place in the right hemisphere of the brain, not the hemisphere which is used for language and reading generally. Although, curiously enough, it is used in reading with those diagnosed with dyslexia.

Let us now move on to smaller inset boards, with coloured images of cats and dogs or lorries and helicopters. Again, all babies enjoy playing with these with an adult. Now let us move on again and use an inset board with large wooden numbers. So far, everything has been a series of enjoyable games for the baby. There is plenty of success and no failure, combined with the undivided attention of an adult. Hard to imagine many small children who would not like this! Just as the baby can now say "dog" and recognise its shape in the inset board, now she moves on to saying "Eight" and recognising its shape. We're still using right hemisphere here. Now we write very large numbers, maybe a foot high and show them to the baby. She sees them and say "Eight" or "Two" or whatever. when we are out with the baby, we point out such numbers and the baby, who can be as young as twelve months or eighteen months, is delighted to shout out the names of the numbers.

Next, we do the same with simple words. They are big and chunky and will usually be in the form of a specially made inset board. In no time at all, the child is reading words as shapes and shouting them out when she sees them. There is no problem in a baby acquiring a sight vocabulary of a hundred or so words in this way. Since about half the words we use from day to day are roughly a hundred words like "the", "it" and "that", this is a great start to reading. You will observe that we have not had to worry about the alphabet, irregular spelling or anything else of the sort. most importantly of all, the whole thing has been a game for the baby, without the stress of possible failure. If she does not like it, stop. A few ten minute sessions throughout the day will usually do the trick.

What are the advantages for the baby of doing this? In other words, why should we bother and not just leave it to seven or eight? In the first few years of a baby's life, process called apoptosis takes place. Neurones that are not being used whither away and die. Those which are being used have strengthened connections. In other words, the brain is reconstructing itself and it does so according to which parts are being used the most. If a child is deprived of language stimulation, this can cause connections to shrivel up. If there is an enriched environment; the connections are strengthened. The same thing can happen with music and also pattern recognition. After the first few years of life, this process of making new connections becomes slower and less effective. It is therefore a good idea to stimulate those parts of the brain that we wish to see develop. Rats kept in an impoverished environment actually have smaller brains than those who have grown from birth in an enriched environment. The same thing happens in the brains of human infants. Think children in Rumanian orphanages. If this lack of stimulation lasts too long, the effects are irreversible. I dare say we all know about Genie, the girl who was deprived of all language stimulation until the age of thirteen. She never caught up, was never able to acquire grammar.

I cannot really see why anybody would avoid playing games of this sort with babies. I can readily understand why formal lessons in phonics would be a lousy idea for very small children, but nobody in their senses would try such a thing anyway or so it is to be hoped. I am sure that this could put a child off reading.

30 comments:

"If a child is deprived of language stimulation, this can cause connections to shrivel up."

Recognising the shapes of words using the same part of the brain used to recognise shapes and colours doesn't sound much like language stimulation, as you say it doesn't even use the same part of the brain. If that part of the brain is being stimulated already by shape recognition, etc, why would you need to stimulate it with word shapes? Unless you are suggesting that older children cannot learn different shapes such as a octagon, or pentagon unless they learnt them during a critical period as a toddler? Language stimulation is being read to, conversation, word and rhyming games, etc. Maybe shape recognition plays a part but there is no need to recognise shapes of words at 3 in order to read them easily at 10. If that were the case, nobody in China would become fully literate because it is impossible for them to learn all of the words they need to be literate during early childhood.

"I dare say we all know about Genie, the girl who was deprived of all language stimulation until the age of thirteen. She never caught up, was never able to acquire grammar."

How much of a part in language development do you think learning word shapes plays? I doubt it would have helped Genie at all on it's own and considering that some (many) children learn very few words in the way you describe (how many word shapes are sold, I've not seen them in homes or schools) it doesn't help many children at all. Children who learn to read late (at home by their own choice) generally learn more quickly than children who learn whilst younger. This would not happen if there were a critical period or need to learn to read early.

"I cannot really see why anybody would avoid playing games of this sort with babies. I can readily understand why formal lessons in phonics would be a lousy idea for very small children, but nobody in their senses would try such a thing anyway or so it is to be hoped."

I don't think anyone suggested that these games should be avoided, but I see little benefit in spending so much time on it (in addition to the normal shape, colour, animal, activities recognition games which most involved parents play anyway) if there are more enjoyable activities available, especially when plenty of children learn to read early without it. Learning to read later will take up less time and it's certainly not what happens in schools which is where the research being discussed recently is relevant.

"I am sure that this could put a child off reading. "

That depends on the child. If your child is content to spend time sitting drawing, playing with puzzles and games as Dolores Durkin describes with the early readers she found you are probably right, as long as the parent is sensitive to cues. However, some children just want to run, climb, kick a ball and play actively until they drop and fall asleep, preferring even to eat on the run if they can. Obviously there will be opportunities to discuss letters on signs during walks etc but really, why do you find it so difficult to believe that some children are just not interested in learning to read until they are older even if it pleases their parents? How do you explain families with a mix of early and late readers despite the same environmental stimulation?

Simon said; "What are the advantages for the baby of doing this? In other words, why should we bother and not just leave it to seven or eight? In the first few years of a baby's life, process called apoptosis takes place. Neurones that are not being used whither away and die. Those which are being used have strengthened connections. In other words, the brain is reconstructing itself and it does so according to which parts are being used the most. If a child is deprived of language stimulation, this can cause connections to shrivel up. If there is an enriched environment; the connections are strengthened. The same thing can happen with music and also pattern recognition. After the first few years of life, this process of making new connections becomes slower and less effective."

Well, sort of. We know that there is a rapid proliferation of neural synapses beginning at about 30 weeks gestation, which happens to coincide with the maturation of the sense organs. This continues into the second post-natal year, and then a process of synaptic pruning begins which continues into adulthood.

We also know from mammalian studies that novel stimuli trigger synapse formation, repeated stimuli trigger synaptic pruning and very frequently repeated actions lead to myelination, resulting in very fast signal transmission and the automation of the skill. So sensory input activates neurons and neural pathways activated by repeated stimuli become strengthened because some neurons develop at the expense of others.

A child who lacked sensory stimulation would have an underdeveloped brain because the number of synapses generated would be low, rather than because neurons were not used and died. It’s use that leads to pruning. Which is presumably why the number of synapses declines with age, as less novel and more familiar information is encountered.

If it were the case that babies started out with billions of neurons that then died off gradually, so the sooner you start teaching them stuff the better, then how do people learn completely new skills later in life? Indeed, there are many skills that babies can’t master, because it takes time to acquire cognitive and motor skills, and fine skills are dependent on gross skills being in place. Many children all over the world learn to read effortlessly at seven or eight, and adults can become extremely proficient in reading languages with very different scripts and structures.

I think the idea that children have to learn to read as soon as possible otherwise it will be too late and they will have passed some developmental window has some truth in it, but might be overplayed. With children like Genie, we are assuming that if she had not been imprisoned she would have developed ‘normally’. We simply have no idea how she, or the Fritzl children, would have developed had their circumstances been less tragic.

It is true suzieg, that people learn new skills later in life, but it is much harder. If halfa baby's brain is removed, the other half can make do and various parts of the brain ate used for different purposes. If the same thing happens with an adult, perhaps a stroke, this does not happen.

Yes, because babies have a lot of neurons that are unspecialised because they have only learned a small amount of stuff. In adult brains, a lot of neurones already have specialised functions, so there are fewer available with which to acquire new skills. The stroke victim's ability to recover will depend on the location and extent of the damage to the brain.

I'm not disputing the fact that babies learn faster than older children or than adults. Just that what we know about how neurons respond to stimulation doesn't fit a model of young children having a huge number of neurones and those dying off if they are not used.

Nor do I see the frequency with which toddlers learn to read as being an outcome of their parents failing to teach them. They have an awful lot of other things to learn before they can learn to read and that just takes time for most children.

"I'm not disputing the fact that babies learn faster than older children or than adults."

How has this been shown? I mean, it takes lots of repetition for a toddler to learn a new colour even when they know other colours so already have an understanding of the concept of colours yet I would expect an older child or adult to learn a new colour much more easily, possibly only hearing the name once. Is this based on the amount of new information a baby learns over a short time rather than how quickly they learn each 'fact'?

Ah suzieg, I forgot that you had a zoology background! I was using words like "shrivel" and "whither" as metaphors. What actually happens is that the number of neurones remains unchanged, but the connections between them, the dendrites, can increase or decrease. To give you a concrete example of what I mean, I am sure that you know about Hubel and Wiesel's work at Harvard iin 1963. They sewed a newborn kitten's eyelids up for the first six months of life. When the stitches were removed, they discovered that the eye was actually blind. Post mortem examination of the visual cortex showed that those neurones simply hadn't made the connections at the critical time. Result, blindness. We know that this happens in children too. For instance if a child has a lazy eye, we can treat it with glasses which will encourage that eye to work as well. If we delay treatment until the child is older, then it won't work. The eye is permanently lazy and those connections in the cortex will never be made. The critical period of plasticity has passed. Similarly with babies born with cataracts that are not removed until the child is a little older. Those connections in the visual cortex can never be made after a certain age. This principle can be extended to other areas of the brain, as I am sure you know. Hence the importance of stimulating those pathways before the critical period is over.

It's more about the rate of development. I used the word 'learn' in relation to the acquisition of the entire range of new skills and knowledge. There's a massive increase in complexity of behaviour during the first couple of years of life, which then slows down considerably.I agree that it might take a toddler just as long to learn to read as it would a five year old.

The 'critical periods' are not for everything, though, are they? There is good evidence of critical periods for the development of basic functioning of visual and auditory cortex, but once acquired, those basic functions can be used in a multiplicity of complex skills. Is there evidence for a 'critical period' for reading?

What you describe, Simon, is pretty much how it was with my daughter in her earliest years when I first became a stay-at-home dad. Games with colours, shapes, letters, inset boards and so on. Also, I would sit with her and read stories to her that had large colourful pictures and that I enjoyed reading. I still have the bumper Postman Pat annual my mum gave my daughter for her first birthday, now dog-eared and held together with sellotape. I must have read every story in that a thousand times. Seems like it anyway. In the beginning, as I read with my daughter, she would often turn back a page she wanted me to reread over and over, I recall, so we would be exploring the story or parts of it not necessarily reading it from start to finish. As time passed, my daughter would read words herself, then passages and ultimately the complete stories. She was a fluent reader at three.

My daughter's ten years younger brother didn't have as many opportunities because both my wife and I were in full-time jobs when he came along and parental involvement in his earliest years was not what it could have been until I quit my job to be at home with him when he was two. He wasn't much interested in books by that time, but I did read to him a little every day for the enjoyment of the stories and he was reading at five when he started school, though far from fluently - which I have to say wasn't a cause for concern since he was 'making progress'. Unfortunately, he then went backwards as his school systematically trained him to hate books (that's what it amounted to). My wife and I removed our son from school at his request at seven and he then went from plodding reader to excellent reader within a year without so much as looking at a book (thank you videogames).

Of course, now that my daughter is 24 and my son is 14, it's impossible for anyone to tell which of them was a fluent reader at three and which at seven.

Though being reminded of how reading happened so differently for them is interesting. For my daughter, it was simply a part of her daily life from when she was a baby, a skill acquired I suppose almost by osmosis. Although there was always incidental assistance available. For my son, it could be said that he did indeed become a fluent reader almost effortlessly on his own and of his own volition at a later age. Although it could also be said that reading fundamentals were already in place when he did so.

Which way was better? I don't know. They both worked out just fine. But (and this will probably put me at odds with autonomous educators), had my son, after coming out of school, remained a plodding reader a year later at the age of eight, I would have intervened for sure. I regard reading as a crucial life skill, but not necessarily one to be learned 'at some stage' before adulthood because it will be useful when the child becomes an adult - I believe it's a skill that enhances a child's experience of the world from the time it's acquired and I see no reason why it can't be integrated into the growing up process from the beginning. In any event, I personally would never have relied on my own children becoming interested in reading 'one day' when they were 'ready'.

" Do you know if people who learn to read as adults become as fluent readers as those who learn to read as children? If so, that would disprove the idea that there is a critical period for reading."

There doesn’t appear to have been a great deal of research. Of course adults are a different kettle of fish. They might have big issues with the stigma of not being able to read, and the failure of their previous attempts, the same audiological and visual problems have been found, and the degree of fluency aimed for might be lower, depending on the adult’s aspirations. Adult literacy programmes also address issues like teaching reading to non-native speakers, where someone who can already read fluently in their own tongue is learning a new language, or where someone who has never learned to read is learning to do so in an unfamiliar language. If I find anything informative, I’ll post it.

Interesting what you say, Bob, about the school training your son to hate books. exactly the same thing happened to my older daughter. She loved reading and books before starting school. Within a month or two of starting school though, she was saying things like, "Books are boring" and "Reading is stupid". I don't hink that this is uncommon. I don't know about Australia, but in some schools here there is an anti-intellectual culture, even among five and six year olds. Books symbolise learning and culture and so the kids spurn them and jeer at those who like them. Didn't take any chances with the next kid; simply didn't send her to begin with!

" Do you know if people who learn to read as adults become as fluent readers as those who learn to read as children? If so, that would disprove the idea that there is a critical period for reading." The problem with this, Anonymous, is that there are probably not enough parents starting young enough to make up a good sample that anybody could analyse. That's why the work in this field tends to be restricted to schools. Since this is typically a very different thing from how very early readers learn, you would not be comparing like with like. As I have said before, I can well imagine that a young child being drilled in the rudiments of synthetic phonics would be put off reading at the age of six. This is quite different from a child playing with inset boards containing large numbers at the age of eighteen months.

First anonymous, I was not talking about language stimulation, except in comparison with activities which stimulate pathways in the right hemisphere. Talking of Genie was intended to show what did happen during language deprivation and could happen during literacy deprivation.You are quite right about some children much preferring to run about and kick balls and so on. obviously, I wouldn't be thinking about trying to get an energetic six year old to sit down and play, "Can you see the blue triangle"! That's why it is worth starting before the child can even walk. Your mention of Chinese opens a whole new and very interesting debate. For one thing because the Chinese rate of dyslexia is a bout a quarter of what it is in this country and also because it seems to be associated with the right hemisphere rather than the left as in England and America. I did teach my daughter Chinese at the same time as English and it was pretty successful; by the age of two she could read a few of the words in the local Chinese restaurent. It is the same principle, treating words as whole units or gestalts, rather than being made up of letters or syllables.

"I did teach my daughter Chinese at the same time as English and it was pretty successful; by the age of two she could read a few of the words in the local Chinese restaurent. It is the same principle, treating words as whole units or gestalts, rather than being made up of letters or syllables."

Yes it is the same principle. And children can learn to read English well, treating words as gestalts. My son taught himself to read that way, using me as a resource, because he didn't have the fine visual or auditory discrimination skills to use synthetic phonics to build up novel words himself. The problem arises with novel words. Because English is a written phonetically, rather than idiographically like Chinese, schools feel it is important to give children the skills to work out novel words for themselves, even if they have never heard them spoken before. And I can understand why.

You've commented before on the need for 'good' teaching of reading in schools, Simon. What do you think 'good' teaching should consist of? And did you notice how your daughter made the transition from gestalt reading to phonetic reading? Or did she not make that transition?

My daughter made the transition to using what the schools call "word attack" strategies without my even being aware of it. I can only speculate that her familiarity with words and the constant reading enabled her to work out the rules for herself. For example, at the age of three she read out loud a headline in the Telegraph about a "Nazi Rocket". I still have no idea how she did this, as her pronunciation was perfect. Even had she worked out that Z makes a buzzing sound, I cannot see how she could have known that the German word "Nazi" makes the Z into a TS sound! As regards schools suzieg, I would like to see a return to the old look and say method. I think that this gives children instant success in most cases, rather than struggling with all the paraphernalia of synthetic phonics. I agree that this method is handy for decoding new words, but not a few children have difficulty with the ideas of sequencing and blending. These children would probably benefit from treating words as patterns. Ideally, different methods would be used according to a child's strengths and weaknesses, but this is very hard in a class of thirty children. That is why usually only one method is adopted. if that does not suit 20% of children, then that is too bad. Another good reason to educate at home!

That's interesting. When I trained as a primary teacher 30 years ago, we were told that children used different strategies to learn to read and that we should cue in to a child's predominant strategy, but should use as wide a range of cues to support reading as we could (context, pictures, whole word recognition, mnemonics, first and last letters, letter patterns etc). Of course at that time, children who did not learn to read quickly were seen as 'late readers' and were learned to read whenever they learned to read.

After the education theorists took the 'education' bit out of 'child-centred education' the laissez-faire approach to reading allegedly produced school leavers who couldn't read well and that's when the national curriculum was brought in. I've never seen data comparing school leaver literacy levels over the decades, so I have no idea what strategies work well or not.

I would certainly agree with you that any single strategy would be likely to result in 20% of children struggling. I don't, however, think that one-to-one support would be out of the question in schools at all; in my children's infant classes you couldn't move for teaching assistants, trainee teachers, school leavers on work experience and parents coming in to 'help' with reading. The problem is that they didn't 'help', as far as I could see. They just listened to the children read. In groups usually. My comments on my son's difficulties with specific consonant blends were met with the comment that they didn't want to write anything critical in his home-school work book because it might discourage him! Not that he would have been able to read it anyway. I was assured that the school had the matter in hand, but it clearly didn't, because although he completed their phonics training successfully, he couldn't use it to help him read, and so devised his own strategy.

With regard to your daughter pronouncing Nazi correctly; when I was a child we had the 'Home Service' on the radio for a good part of the day, so I was a regular listener to the news, weather forecast, Any Questions, Womans' Hour etc. from birth. I can remember reading the newspaper and recognising words I had heard on the radio, even though I had never seen them written down and often didn't know what they meant. I assume your daughter would have grown up in an environment where there was background conversation and radio/tv programmes that would have contained a wide variety of words which were new to her.

Ah suzieg, the Home service! Yes, this was the constant background to my childhood as well. You are quite right that even when she ws a baby, my daughter would have heard a very wide range of words from different sources. What you say about "reading help" at school is interesting. Essentially, most of them just sit there while the child reads out loud. One might hear them say, "Just look at the word Jimmy! You know that one." This is really helpful to a child who is on the verge of tears as he stares uncomprehendingly at the forest of black squiggles facing him on the page!

"I wouldn't be thinking about trying to get an energetic six year old to sit down and play, "Can you see the blue triangle"! That's why it is worth starting before the child can even walk."

I was thinking of my child when they were aged from about 5 months. They didn't stop crawling and exploring, was walking before 9 months and kicking balls by 11 months. It's difficult to remember details that far back but I don't think I had time to move beyond colours, shapes and animals, etc before then. If they were awake they were moving and would carry their food with them or just have a few a couple of mouthfuls and go without if they couldn't. Literally as soon as they opened their eyes they would be moving. I have a video of them waking up when they were just over 1. As soon as their eyes opened they were getting out of bed saying, "play football". I always thought the idea of parents using TV as a babysitter was a joke as they never sat still long enough to watch it!

Simon, do you have any case studies on 'literacy deprivation'. Language deprivation etc is well known, but I'm not sure that 'literacy deprivation' is.

I was the Head of Special Needs Dept in a large London comprehensive school with feeder primnary schools of widely varying quality. Some taught reading well and kids came in with good existing literacy. Some were utterly useless (always the Whole Language adherents BTW) and the kids arrived at our school at age 11 with reading ages of 5. (Basically, nothing.)

However, they could and did catch up with appropriate remedial attention. Not sure where you get the idea that teaching reading has to happen at a particular age or it doesn't happen at all.

I forgot Mrs. Anon that you are a fanatical disciple of synthetic phonics. No, I know of no studies about "literacy deprivation". Perhaps this is because as far as I know I only coined the expression yesterday! I don't say that teaching of reading has to happen at a certain age. I am saying that just as learning to speak another language fluently with a native accent can happen at three or four, but not at fifteen or sixteen, I think it is likely to be similar with reading. That if you learn it young enough, it is like being bilingual. There definitely is a window of opportunity for this and it is pretty damned young. This does not mean that I cannot go to classess now and learn Spanish. But I will neve be as easy with it as a child who grew up knowing the language from the age of eighteen months or so. I suspect strongly that it is the same with the language of reading.

"However, they could and did catch up with appropriate remedial attention. Not sure where you get the idea that teaching reading has to happen at a particular age or it doesn't happen at all."

This comment reminded me of a paper at an Educational Psychology conference where a tutor was reporting on her experiences of teaching children at secondary level with Down Syndrome to read. She said that there was a general perception that if DS children hadn't learned to read by 11 it was 'too late'. Which it clearly wasn't. At the same conference there was another paper by some researchers who had discovered (incidentally to their original research topic), that two non-verbal adults in residential accommodation could read and spell. The only source of reading material they had had access to was magazines and subtitles on tv, since no one had attempted to teach them to read as children.

The developmental window for learning speech sounds from *any* language is very narrow, isn't it? Something like five months. After that, children can detect only sounds specific to the languages they have been exposed to up until that time. This is widely interpreted as indicating that children have a pre-programmed immutable developmental trajectory. Losing the ability to learn *any* speech sound is also explained by the idea of synapses being pruned to make processing of familiar information more efficient. It doesn't preclude the possibilty of learning novel speech sounds accurately, and indeed, this appears to be what happens in the case of children under seven who learn new languages.

I'm not denying the possibility that there is a window for learning to read, I'm just not convinced it's biologically determined, clearly defined, or that we have any idea of what age range it covers. Do you have any data for this Simon?

I'm guessing that "anecdotal evidence" is not the right answer to that question, right? The truth is, no i don't. It seems very likely to, bearing in mind what we know of the brain's decreasing plasticity as the child grows older, but hard data, no. There's plenty of evidence by extension from what is known about things like the acquisition of musical ability being connected with early exposure to music and various things like that. So I suppose this remains no more than another crackpot idea about the teaching of reading, of which there are already many!

What's wrong with looking at Alan Thomas's study involving 200+ home educated children? Something like 20 of these were late readers (not reading by age 8) and all went on to read at their age level or higher within a short time of beginning to read. If you can accept Dolores Durkin's self select sample research results, why not Alan Thomas's?

You are right about the anecdotal evidence! I think the theory is belied by the fact that other skills are acquired very proficiently later in life. Most people don't learn to drive until they have almost reached adulthood, for example, or the skills they need in their job until after the age of 21. To be sure, the ability to learn deteriorates as one grows older, but research with the elderly suggests it just slows down, rather than disappears altogether.

The problem with assessing the ability to acquire reading skills of adult non- readers in the developed world, is that most people who learn to read as adults will have had some problem, whether biological or social which caused difficulties with reading when they were at school. They might still have that problem to overcome, and therefore be at a disadvantage compared to people who had never had the opportunity to learn to read when younger.

Are there no countries around the world where illiterate adults who have never been to school or previously attempted to learn to read are being taught to read? Or do countries just concentrate on children who have more spare time when attempting to improve universal literacy?